Les Rencontres d’Arles 2019
Evokativ
Curated by Lucie Černá
Libuše Jarcovjáková was the star of the 50th edition of the Rencontres d'Arles photography festival. Her exhibition Evokativ in the church of St. Anne, one of the main locations of the festival, presented a selection of a total of 220 photographs, vintage prints not yet exhibited were displayed in combination with new prints in an area of more than 450 m2.
The exhibition showed photographs taken between 1970 and 1989 in communist Czechoslovakia during a dark period of political oppression and lack of personal freedom. But it was not so that important for Jarcovjáková. Her photographers recount freedom, express fluidity, and atmosphere, and bear an authentic and clear-eyed witness to the life of an artist.
Jarcovjáková’ s authentic, visual and life affirming photographs tell a story, her own story. From the very start she took photos in a personal, clearly profiled style that blends rawness with poetry.
(...) she shot on the nocturnal streets and in dive bars, parties and scuzzy bedrooms, capturing the long nights and hungover days of a repressive, and thus doggedly dissolute, time in her homeland. Uncompromising and grittily poetic, Evokativ took me by complete surprise and stayed with me for days afterwards.
Sean O’Hagan, The Guardian, 2019
The book Evokativ, which accompanied the exhibition, was shortlisted on the Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards 2019 in a category The PhotoBook of the Year.
What’s On
The New York Times: Their Bodies Were Weapons.
The Guardian: Evokativ the Best Show of 2019!
Le Monde: Libuse Jarcovjakova, journal intime d’une Tchécoslovaque opprimée.